Central Bucks School District

Writing Research Papers


I.E. USING RESEARCH SOURCES: Plagiarism and Common Knowledge
     In doing your research, you will read from sources written by other people.  You are free to include their ideas in your paper.  In fact, you can even quote their exact words.  However, you must give credit when you borrow other people’s opinions, words, or ideas.

Plagiarism
     If you borrow someone else’s ideas or words and pretend they are your own, you are plagiarizing.  Plagiarism means to use someone else's opinions or ideas or language without giving him/her credit.  You are being dishonest when you plagiarize.  It is a form of cheating.  You will avoid plagiarism if you acknowledge that the borrowed ideas and / or words are not your own.
     Below is an example of plagiarism taken from the fourth edition of the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, section 1.7, pages 26, 29.  Suppose, for example, you want to use the material in the following passage, which appears on page 625 of an essay by Wendy Martin in the Book Columbia Literary History of the United States.

Some of Dickinson’s most powerful poems express her firmly held conviction that life cannot be fully comprehended without an understanding of death.  (words as they appear in book)
If you write the following sentence without any documentation, you commit plagiarism:
Emily Dickinson strongly believed that we cannot understand life fully unless we also comprehend death.
But you may present the material if you cite your source:
As Wendy Martin has suggested, Emily Dickinson strongly believed that we cannot understand life fully unless we also comprehend death  (625).
 
     The source is indicated, in accordance with MLA style, by the name of the author and by the page reference in parentheses.  The name refers the reader to the corresponding entry in the works-cited list, which appears at the end of the paper.
     If you have any doubts about whether or not you are committing plagiarism, cite your source or sources.
     Giving credit is known as citation.   The first type of citation is used for a direct quotation; you must give credit if you quote directly from a book.  The second type of citation is paraphrase; you must also credit any indirect reference where you restate the other person's ideas in your own words.
     Because you do not want to plagiarize, you must take care to start the research process by keeping careful track of sources and direct quotations as you take notes.  Papers which are copied directly from another source will receive a failing grade and will need to be re-written.  Less extreme cases of plagiarism will be dealt with accordingly and will result in a failing grade or reduced credit for the paper.

Common Knowledge
     When you begin reading about your topic, all of the information will seem new to you.  As you continue reading, you will realize that much of the factual information is repeated, and only part of it is new.  If factual information is repeated by three or more sources it is called common knowledge.  You do not have to give credit when you use common knowledge.  For example, you rarely need to give sources for familiar proverbs ("You can’t judge a book by its cover”), well known quotations ("We shall overcome”), or common knowledge.  ("George Washington was the first president of the United States”)  (MLA Handbook, sec. 1.7,  29).
 

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